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Snowy owls run down rats amid the runways

Located on an island smack in the middle of Boston Harbor, Logan Airport is one of the East Coast’s busiest transportation hubs, hosting aircraft from around the world. But during the winter months, Logan is home to another very special type of aerial denizen — one that you certainly would not expect to see hanging out in mowed fields next to a phalanx of concrete runways supporting a steady stream of metal behemoths barreling along at breakneck speeds.

According to Natural History magazine, Logan Airport attracts more wintering snowy owls than any other place in the United States. Snowy owls usually start landing at the airport in early November and don’t begin to leave until early April. Since 1981 when surveillance began, Norman Smith, Director of the Blue Hills Trailside Museum in Milton, Massachusetts, has captured, banded and released more than 400 different “snowies” at Logan.

Why is Logan Airport so popular with this classic Arctic species? Researcher Smith says that when winter arrives on the Arctic tundra and the lemmings — this awesome raptor’s favorite prey — go underground, the snowies fly south, settling down anywhere that looks like the Arctic tundra they call home. And with its flat open expanses of short, scruffy grasses and abundant population of rodents — namely an all-you-can-eat buffet of Norway rats — Logan fills the bill.

Other prey items that have shown up on the owls’ dinner menu at Logan include geese, ducks, other birds of prey — and even a great blue heron. Because of the potential for disastrous (for both humans and the owls) collisions, researcher Smith captures and relocates Logan’s snowies when they show up every winter. By the middle of January 2012, Smith had removed 21 of the snow-white raptors, whereas in a typical year only six have to be removed. The record for the most snowies ever trapped at Logan is 43 in 1986.

People have always had a special fascination with owls in general. As Paul Wigington writes, “These mysterious creatures are known far and wide as symbols of wisdom, omens of death, and bringers of prophecy. In some countries, they are seen as good and wise, in others they are a sign of evil and doom to come.”

With elegant ghostly-white feathering that echoes their Arctic origins, huge cat-like yellow eyes, and bulky bodies — the heaviest of all the owls — snowy owls have always had a special allure. The popularity of the Harry Potter book series has given extra international emphasis, especially with young people, to the snowy’s reputation, as a snowy owl serves as Harry’s constant companion. They are one of the few species that can entice even non-birders to go out in the field and take a look.

Budd Titlow is a professional wetland scientist and wildlife biologist and an award-winning photographer. He has written three natural history books, most recently “Bird Brains: Inside the Strange Minds of Our Fine Feathered Friends.”